12 persons in the Lloyd's List of 100 most influential shipping people are Greeks. Janis Agelikousis, who manages 76 vessels with a capacity exceeding 14 million tons and signed a contract last year to build four cargo ships and three tankers totaling 450 million euros, is sixth. In this man’s world of shipping tycoons there is a room for successful women like Ageliki Fragou. It was known until recently that she mainly deals with cargo shipments of dry cargo. Last year, she makes an entrepreneurial turn and orders the building of a series of next-generation tankers and the building of the new fleet of over 20 tankers is worth 1.12 billion dollars.

In general 2010 has proved to be successful for the Greek ship-owners who have invested about $ 15 billion in new ships for the whole year. According to recent data from the Association of Greek Ship-owners, the local businessmen in the sector control about 15% of the shipping industry in the world and take the first place in the European Union. So, we decided to find more information about the Greek shipping tycoons, the only businessmen in Greece who can say they have succeeded in the year of the Memorandum.

Fostiropoulos Family led by the father Kostas and the sons Mizhalis, Alexandros and Yannis manage the companies Almi Tankers and Fairsky. They made a stormy sea after signing a deal worth 640 million euros for the building of 10 suezmax tankers with the Korean shipyards Daewoo. Moreover, the family wants to add to its fleet two more VLCC tankers worth more than 200 million euros, which will be submitted at the end of 2013.

Another successful Greek ship boss is Vangelis Marinakis. Last year, he listed his second company on the New York Stock Exchange. Marinakis is well known not only for the shipping business where he manages 44 ships (30 fuel tankers, 12 cargo ships carrying dry cargo and 2 cargo ships), but also as the president of the Olympiakos football club. To take advantage of the lower price of cargo ships Marinakis has ordered two new vessels with a capacity of 1700 TEU.

The president of the Association of Greek Ship-owners Todoros Veniamis, who is also the owner of Golden Union, has ordered the building of four new cargo ships by the Chinese shipyards Jiangsu and Cosco, which are the owners of part of the port of Piraeus since the end of 2009. Golden Union specializes in dry cargo transportation and currently has 16 heavy ships. The great boom of the company comes in the past decade, when there is increasing demand for cement in North Africa and the Middle East, and the constant need to transport cars to these countries.

Dynacom Tankers Management is another successful Greek company. Dynacom is owned by George Prokopios and he agreed last year on the building of 11 ships totaling 600 million euros. Six tankers and two cargo ships will be built in Chinese and Korean shipyards, and its subsidiaries Sea Traders agreed with the Chinese Cosco to build three other cargo ships.

The Retsi family is to make a great comeback by ordering eight new ships to meet the growing transport needs in the world. The first agreement for three cargo ships kamsarmax was made with the Korean Hyundai shipyards, and then three others and two tankers were ordered on behalf of Golden Energy. The company manages the fuel transportation and the family has 66 vessels with a capacity of about five million tons and is currently waiting 24 new vessels to be built.

George Ikonomou who signed a deal for 5.6 billion euros with a Korean company made the biggest investment in 2010 among the Greek shipping entrepreneurs. It must build a marine oil rig and the Samsung shipyards are commissioned to develop four drillships – the support vessels in the building of the platform. Furthermore, Ikonomou was involved in a deal for the building of 12 modern tankers totaling 770 million dollars.

GRReporter’s content is brought to you for free 7 days a week by a team of highly professional journalists, translators, photographers, operators, software developers, designers. If you like and follow our work, consider whether you could support us financially with an amount at your choice.